Disk around Hypergiant Star (Solar System Comparison)

This illustration compares the size of a gargantuan star and its
surrounding dusty disk (top) to that of our solar system. Monstrous
disks like this one were discovered around two "hypergiant" stars by
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers believe these disks might
contain the early "seeds" of planets, or possibly leftover debris from
planets that already formed.

The hypergiant stars, called R 66 and R 126, are located about
170,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's nearest neighbor galaxy,
the Large Magellanic Cloud. The stars are about 100 times wider than
the sun, or big enough to encompass an orbit equivalent to Earth's. The
plump stars are heavy, at 30 and 70 times the mass of the sun,
respectively. They are the most massive stars known to sport disks.

The disks themselves are also bloated, with masses equal to several
Jupiters. The disks begin at a distance approximately 120 times greater
than that between Earth and the sun, or 120 astronomical units, and
terminate at a distance of about 2,500 astronomical units.

Hypergiant stars are the puffed-up, aging descendants of the most
massive class of stars, called "O" stars. The stars are so massive that
their cores ultimately collapse under their own weight, triggering
incredible explosions called supernovae. If any planets circled near
the stars during one of these blasts, they would most likely be
destroyed.

The orbital distances in this picture are plotted on a logarithmic
scale. This means that a given distance shown here represents
proportionally larger actual distances as you move to the right. The
sun and planets in our solar system have been scaled up in size for
better viewing.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.